Tag Archives: Definition

Do you want to create winning teams? Or improve already effective teams? Agile can help – regardless of what department you are in. As background, Agile is a software development methodology that uses practical tools and concepts to empower people to be more productive. Here are three tools that you can start using immediately to enhance teamwork and trust in your organization.

Working Agreement

What is it?

A working agreement is a document of the values and behaviors that your team defines for how they will work together. It is powerful because it is crafted by the team, for the team (not by management). It facilitates great discussion about what will work for all team members. It could address topics such as after-hours availability, meeting etiquette, team member attitudes on interruptions, philosophical positions on accountability and more.

How to get started:

The easiest way to introduce a working agreement at the office is before a long meeting. The meeting could be a few hours or a few days, but long durations tend to bring out the worst in all of us. Ask for five minutes at the start of the meeting to document a working agreement. Ask everyone to define the appropriate behaviors for the meeting. You may have to prompt the group with provocative questions like “Are smartphones allowed? Who is taking meeting minutes? When are break times? If everyone is not back after a break, does the meeting commence, or do we wait?” With a little prompting, a healthy discussion should take place. Write down the results of the discussion and keep the working agreement displayed throughout the meeting. If anyone violates a tenet of the working agreement, any team member can gently point out the discrepancy and the meeting can continue. This simple introduction to working agreements will allow people to become familiar with the practice and then you can apply it more broadly to project teams.

Today starts a series of blogs on launching a product. If you have heard me speak or been around me for 10 minutes, then you have heard me say that we recently launched 6 products in less than 3 years. I talk about it so much because I am so proud of this organization for accomplishing such an awesome feat. What does it take to launch a product? You have to define it. That sounds pretty basic, huh? Who would have a product that they couldn’t define? But the devil is in the details and there are several ways that products need to be defined. Let’s look at the nuances to better understand why this is harder than it looks.

Define for IT (Engineering)

You have to articulate each feature in detail so IT (Engineering) knows what to build. This could be a prioritized list of 10-15 things or perhaps 100 small features. The point is that Product and IT need to be on the same page as to the critical features, and what are the nice additions to be added, time and resources permitting. But for product management, the product definition doesn’t end there.

Product Management roles are challenging and fun and I am a self-professed Product Management geek. One of the critical responsibilities for a product manager is to successfully launch new products that are built in concert with the IT and Operations teams. In my experience, there are several key steps in the launch process that must be considered. Here are five posts that walk through these steps.